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jvm___

But how do you determine the users intent?

They asked for the mobile version - but they're on desktop.

Do you serve what the asked for? Or what you think they should want?

What if they actually want the mobile version - if you always send desktop to desktop, then they can't get mobile...

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On mobile, they asked for the desktop version, and got redirected to mobile. Does intent not matter there? If you are going to redirect automatically, then redirect back automatically.

You’re getting downvoted, but this is a totally legitimate comment. A sizable minority of people prefer the mobile WP interface and find it cleaner even on a non-mobile device.

m.wikipedia isn’t the default, so it’s different from regular wikipedia.com redirecting a mobile user to the mobile version.

It’s easier for them to go to m.wikipedia.com than to change their user agent, especially if they aren’t that technical.

There are plenty of websites where you can switch between mobile and desktop websites without using multiple URLs.

The point is that the user can go to `m.wikipedia.com` and not do anything else. They don't have to hunt around for a footer option, they don't have to do multiple page loads (which can cost some people money!), they don't have to keep some cookies around or use the same device for their preference to be maintained.

Note also that WP isn't alone in their choice. Facebook, another website with a large non-Western user base, also maintains the same behavior. Go to https://m.facebook.com, you won't be redirected to https://facebook.com .

There are tradeoffs either way, and no matter what WP does, they'll be making some users unhappy. Not all of these users fit the same profile, either. Wikipedia has a global user base, so what's best for most American sites isn't necessarily what's best for Wikipedia. Ultimately, it's not the case that one option is right, and the other is wrong.

I think the right option is to use whatever is best for most users. Most users (by far) will be fine with being served the mobile/desktop website automatically, depending on whether they use a mobile/desktop browser.

m.wikipedia also requires less network bandwidth which may be exactly what you want in some situations.

- Desktop: 388kB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling)

- Mobile: 221kB (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling)

Modern browsers all have buttons to toggle user agent preferences in their dev tools. This is a highly technical request and the solution really only needs to be accessible to highly technical users... it's much _much_ more likely that less technical users with strong style preferences will use one of the dozens of pre-configured alternative CSS extensions or just write up their own stylesheet.

I love user customization but this is extremely niche.

No there is no asking for mobile version in the link, the links are the same for both.

You rely on saving the user display preference as a cookie that persists across sessions.

They declare their preference on a device a single time on the site and that's remembered. None of this has anything to do with which URL is being used.

(Not to mention that following a link on a page like "en.m.wikipedia.org" isn't even user intent, it's author intent at most. But usually not even that, because the author just copied the link without even thinking whether it had an "m." in it or not.)

Not sure why the downvotes, this is a reasonable question. (As evidenced by all the other answers...)

The simple answer is that you don't encode device specific intent in the URI, you put in in style sheets where it belongs.

Not a downvoter, but I can understand them. GP's comment assumes that there need to be different versions of the page, while HTML allows degradable experience. Just have the same page and make it work properly everywhere.

You do what's best for the majority of users.

This is the opposite of accessibility.

Not necessarily. You can optimize for the majority, but still keep things functional for everyone else.

You send them what their browser is asking for - if the user wants a different screen format they're tech savvy enough that they can manually edit their user agent request headers. It's actually quite easy and most browsers (if you pop open dev tools) will have an option to switch the render area to a variety of mobile devices and doing so will cause the request headers to be adjusted appropriately.

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